Tag: if art comp

Masquerade by Kathleen Fischer [Comp00]

IFDB page: Masquerade
Final placement: 8th place (of 53) in the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition

Romance has always been a rather underrepresented genre in IF. Lots of people praise Plundered Hearts, but few authors have stepped forward to create more IF romances. One of those few, though, is Kathleen Fischer, whose IF Art piece The Cove was ostensibly just an interactive landscape, but whose viewpoint character was straight out of a historical romance novel. Now that character returns in a work that further embraces (pardon the pun) the conventions of melodramatic genre romance — the woman in distress who passionately fights against the men who oppress her, the moustache-twirling villain who threatens to destroy the woman’s livelihood unless she marries him, and the mysterious stranger who takes an unforeseen interest in the situation.

If setting is the star of science fiction, and plot is the star of mysteries, then surely character is the feature attraction in a romance. Character, however, is not the strongest point of IF, and the game makes a number of clever choices that help smooth what could be a very difficult blending. For one thing, the conversation system is neither ask/tell nor menu based; if you want the PC to talk, just type “talk” (or “talk to ” if there is more than one in the room) — the game will fill in your words for you. In this way, Masquerade can construct the heated dialogues necessary to demonstrate its characters’ interactions without having to cobble together meaningful exchanges from conversation commands that are necessarily quite simplistic. Another smart choice is to reduce the number of takeable objects, which takes the focus off of trying to figure out what MacGyverish feat to perform on inanimate obstacles and places it on trying to figure out how best to deal with the other characters. Finally, like The Cove, this game implements nouns to an impressive degree of depth, creating the illusion of a fully fleshed-out world in which the characters move. Not only that, the descriptions of various characters (and yourself) change as their relationships to one another shift, a technique which breathes a great deal of life into them.

These choices, especially the first two, step away from the conventions pioneered by games like Zork and Adventure, and the gains that they provide in character and plot are taken out of interaction. In some cases, the tradeoff is handled with so much skill that I didn’t even realize how little interaction was really available until my second play-through. In others, the seams showed rather more.

The game provides the player with a number of yes/no decision points, but few of them seem to make much difference. In addition, there appear to be some places in which the right thing to do is far from obvious — I was never able to get to one of the game’s successful endings because my ability to interact with the characters was so limited, and manipulation of the environment so curtailed, that I was unable to guess the proper action, and therefore never found happiness for the PC. It didn’t help that the game’s meager hint system almost always came up with the response “You ponder your situation, but nothing comes to mind.”. This is one case in which a bundled walkthrough would have helped me a lot — it may have just demonstrated that I wasn’t reading the author’s mind properly, but on the other hand it may have demonstrated that I was being incredibly dense and overlooking an obvious clue.

Instead, I was exhorted to email the author for help. I did so, and eight hours later I haven’t heard back, so I’m going ahead with this review. Authors, allow me to suggest that not providing hints or a walkthrough with a comp entry is detrimental to your chances of doing well in that competition. I’ve only got a few days left, and several more games to get through — I don’t have time to wait around for a reply, and I think many judges are in the same boat. In a non-comp game, omitting the walkthrough can prompt players to post hint requests, or to email you, and this is a good thing. In a competition game, though, when the players are under time pressure and are committed to playing as many of the games as possible anyway, this strategy only ensures that they will be delayed and annoyed if they get stuck. Not the recipe for a high rating.

Even if I had been able to win the game, I still would have had to contend with the numerous bugs that appear in it. At various points, the game referred to an object that wasn’t there, or allowed me to take objects that should have been unavailable, or absconded with one of my possessions after I dropped it, or permitted travel in a direction that should have been forbidden (putting me in a room with the description “.”) Each one of these instances threw me out of the immersive world that the other aspects of the game work so hard to sustain. According to the credits, the game has been tested, but I was left wondering if that testing process was perhaps more rushed than it should have been due to the competition deadline.

Between the bugs and my inability to get anywhere with the puzzles (or even find them), I didn’t enjoy Masquerade nearly as much as I wanted to. If you haven’t played it yet, wait for the next release — the author has always shown a strong commitment to fixing problems, so I’ve no doubt there will be one. Once the bugs have been fixed and better hints are available, Masquerade will have a great deal to offer fans of genre romance. In this incarnation, though, I’m afraid it was a bit of a disappointment.

Rating: 7.3

Shade by Andrew Plotkin as Ampe R. Sand [Comp00]

IFDB page: Shade
Final placement: 10th place (of 53) in the 2000 Interactive Fiction Competition

Way back in 1996, I entered my own comp game. In his review of it, Andrew Plotkin talked about the fact that my game didn’t give any warning when the PC’s perceptions suddenly shifted. He said, “Maybe the author intended that effect, the world changing without any sensation of change — it’s certainly a disorienting effect when it really happens to you.” This was a very charitable interpretation on Zarf’s part; of course, it wasn’t intentional, but rather one of the many novice mistakes I made in that game and corrected in the later version based on that kind of feedback. Shade, however, does use this effect in a way that I’m quite sure is intentional, and is in fact quite masterful. It’s also rather difficult to discuss without spoilers. Let’s just say that sometimes things change absolutely without warning in this game, in fact more and more often as the game goes on. When it happened to me the first time, I wasn’t sure what to make of it — I thought perhaps it was a bug, or some kind of misguided idea of providing variety. As the game went on, I realized that every detail of it is quite deliberate, and all of it calculated to deliver maximum effect. The effect it had on me was very powerful indeed. Quite simply, it blew me away. Not only that, it’s one of those games that I wanted to restart right after I’d finished, just to try different things. When I did this, even more details came together in my head. Even now, little pieces are snapping together in my mind, and I’m getting flashes of realization about the meanings behind the meanings of so many of the game’s elements. Few parts of the IF experience are as startling or as pleasurable.

Also a pleasure is the unwavering standard of excellence set by the game’s writing and coding, especially the coding. The one-room setting is implemented brilliantly, shaping its descriptions based around what the PC is most likely to perceive first. For example, if you’re standing in the living room, the computer desk and other items on the living room floor are described first, followed by mentions of the kitchen nook and bathroom nook. If, however, you’re standing in the kitchen nook, the game will first mention the stove, fridge, and cupboard, then go on to talk about the desk and such. The mimesis achieved by this effect is remarkable, which makes it even more stunning when that mimesis is carefully, strategically bent, then broken. Even better, this kind of care has gone into pretty much every item in the game. They reveal themselves to you in ways that are not only character-appropriate, but which change to accommodate the PC’s changing situation. Shade is the kind of game that puts a ton of care into its coding, most of which the player will never notice, because the very purpose of that care is to make the experience seamless for the player no matter what order she does things in. I noticed, because I think about those kind of things, and because I played it twice. If you liked Shade the first time, play it again — you may be surprised at how well it wraps itself around your commands.

If you haven’t played it once, then for goodness’ sake stop reading this review and play it now. It’s a short game — in fact, there really is no plot to speak of, nor any puzzles. Actually, now that I think about it, Shade almost fits better into the category of IF Art (as exemplified by the entries in Marnie Parker’s periodic IF Art comps) than the category of IF game. Still, like the best art, it creates an electrifying, unforgettable experience. I have to admit that it’s an experience that shook me a little — Shade has several surprises up its sleeve, not all of them pleasant. But don’t let that dissuade you. Try this piece. I think it’ll knock you out — I know it did me.

Rating: 9.8